Fashion

1. Envision the customer through a wide lens—understanding diversity of culture and intentionally avoiding negative stereotypes or appropriation.

Think about age, size, skin color, height, ability, facial features, hair textures, and gender(not only having binary sizing)

• Consider how you can bring adaptable fashion into your lines. 

• As it relates to gender-determine if segmentation by gender is truly necessary (in copy, online and in store layout)

• Design for a range of socio-economic backgrounds, demographics, and abilities. Be mindful of cultural norms. Ensure accessibility/sustainability for all. 

• Avoid tokenism. Steer away from stereotyping.

• Ensure that there is no cultural appropriation.

• Avoid colorism—discrimination based on skin color. For example, in beauty advertising for the African-American community, using all lighter-skinned models and excluding darker-skinned models reinforces harmful beauty standards.

2. Bring inclusion ethics into each stage of the product-to-market pipeline.

• Hindsight (Review of Last Year)

• As customer needs evolve, how are you evolving how you speak to your seasonal product performance? Example: What did the customer respond to? Where did you miss the mark/what was your customer asking for that you didn’t offer? Did you attract new customers? 

• What did last season’s performance reveal about inclusion opportunities next season? Were there opportunities across product categories? Channels (in-store vs. online)? Regions? Customer segments?

• How are you determining what was successful last year across your product assortment and marketing execution? Does this measure reflect any biases or leave any customers unspoken for?

• Ideation/Kick-Off

  • Trend/Concept Inspiration - Is your inspiration coming from a diverse set of sources? Do the seasonal concept boards reflect a diverse range of identities? Were the seasonal trends selected with an inclusive lens? How will inclusion show up holistically throughout the season?

  • Fabrics - How do they look, feel, move?

  • Materials - Where are the raw materials sourced? Are they sourced ethically and sustainably?

  • Patterns - Who designed the patterns? What cultural references are there, and have you collaborated with the community? How have you thought through ensuring that there is no appropriation?

  • Cost - How much will the end product cost? Who is being excluded by the price points? Do not make larger sizes more expensive (ensure price parity).

  • Who in the production process profits? 

• Manufacturing 

• Ensuring fair labor rights down the line of the supply chain & avoiding fast fashion

• Environmental impact of fabric production, manufacturing (dyes, waste, etc.), and disposal/recycling 

• Sample/Fit Review

  • Review fit on a multitude of sizes

  • Review fit on a multitude of body types

  • Don’t expect that one design will look similar on a range of body types. Bring in multiple body types at the onset of the process.

• Adoption

  • Ensure the final assortment/key trends/themes/big ideas reflect the inclusive considerations set forth at the beginning of the pipeline (ideation/kick-off)

• Investment Review

• Confirm the financial investment of the assortment reflects the inclusive considerations set forth at the beginning of the pipeline (ideation/kick-off)

3. Consider all potential customers in the product launch and retail experience.

• Marketing

• Cross-cultural messaging

• Audience research: ensure representation and avoid biases  

• Use a color contrast checker 

• Partner with agencies that represent the communities you are trying to serve

• Physical Store Design

  • Provide accessible physical space to ensure that people with disabilities and older consumers can easily access merchandise

  • Ensure lighting works for all skin tones 

• Language and Copy

  • Ensure language is inclusive and welcoming

  • Avoid appropriating/using popular phrases and slang if you do not understand the origins

  • Avoid binary gender choices

  • Check copy with a screen reader

4. Empower employees to welcome all customers, modeling inclusion through employee training and interactions.

• Security: Create a safe space for everyone (train security on bias)

• Product Education: Provide both functional product/marketing teams and store associates with the training and tools necessary to provide context to inclusive product capsules and initiatives (i.e., inclusive sizing, skin-tone-based products, etc.)

• Proactively share inclusion indicators: if employees speak multiple languages, note that.

• Ensure training is accessible for people with disabilities.

Background

Since the dawn of mass production, product design has often centered on pleasing a majority of consumers. But that approach is flawed because there is no such thing as an average consumer,” says Hosking. “Diversity is the norm, and good design has to respond to that diversity.

Though fashion is largely fueled by consumers who identify as women, “according to one industry report, fewer than half of leading womenswear brands have a female designer at the helm, while another found that only 14 percent of major brands are run by a female executive.” Representation matters, and the fashion industry must commit to having representation (across multiple dimensions of diversity) at all levels. 

Barriers to Inclusive Practices

Barriers can exist at every stage within the product-to-market pipeline (product creation).

• Team composition

• Ideation

• Editing

• Sample creation

• Casting

• Editing

• Buying

• Production

• Marketing

• In-store and online experience

Back To Top